BOUNCE THOSE CHEATING JERKS!

Before we start getting into more muscle groups, there are some things that should be discussed beforehand so that when you are training you are doing it properly instead of increasing the risk of injury and not getting the results you want.

How many people cheat while doing resistance exercise? There is not a problem for cheating when it is the last few reps of the last set of an exercise. The problem is that you see people cheating from the beginning of their work out, in the first rep of the first set to the end of the last rep of the last set. When you are cheating, the muscles that you are training are not getting the proper workout. There are many ways you can cheat, such as not doing the full ROM (Range of Motion), or hyper-extending or hyper-flexing, stalling or using momentum (swinging). When the full ROM isn’t done, you aren’t recruiting all the muscle fibers, which is equal to less contraction, and can also mean that the weight that you are using is too heavy for you. When you are exaggerating the movement, the weight is probably too light and you could injure yourself. Stalling at the concentric point or at the eccentric point, such as at top or bottom of a bench press also can be considered cheating, for you will require more muscle fibers if you keep the movement continuous. And last of all using momentum includes doing most of the latter, which means you aren’t concentrating the workout in the muscles intended, you are probably going to fast, you are using other muscles to compensate to be able to do the movement, and the amount of weight could also be wrong. If there is a need to cheat, you should request the help of a spotter, this way you are still keeping the right muscles working.

Now there are the Jerks in gyms, or the people who jerk every exercise and every movement. You can notice that the ones who usually jerk their joints during and exercise are also the ones that at some point wear braces or bandages or always have them around that joint of the muscle group they are working out. If they feel it in their joint, they probably have already wasted away the natural body fluids (synovial liquids) in between the joints and feel it when they are exercising because bone is rubbing on bone or because their muscles are weak. Having it wrapped up holds the joint in place, may heat it up and give a feeling of protection to the weak muscle when doing exercises, but it won’t prevent injuries or can make an existing injury worse if there is jerking during an exercise. Exercises that people are most seen jerking are for the muscles of the back in dumbbell unilateral rows and seated cable row, attached to the elbows in the bench presses, bent row, and cable E-Z bar triceps extension, the knees in the extensor machine and squats with the hyperextension of the hips, and any exercise for the biceps. If you are using braces for pain, you probably shouldn’t be training in the first place. You should let your injury heal, then start with rehabilitative exercises for strengthening, incorporate stretching, start with low intensity strength training of that muscle and build up to the intensity you were before you started wearing the brace, and then get back into training.

What about those who are bouncing around? If you take away the dumbbells it seems that the person is dancing or if they were moving hopping around like a rabbit which usually goes with the cheating. Workouts for the abs and core muscles have been discussed in past editions, and it has stated that when you are maintaining the right posture, you are already training those muscles. But when you compromise posture and body position, or stop concentrating on the contraction for the muscle group you are training, and start to bounce with exaggerated movement to compensate with other muscles, then you are taking away the intensity from the muscle that is being worked out. When you see bouncing you usually see the jerking too. Then why are results never seen in certain people’s physiques? Or they themselves wonder why they aren’t getting results and getting hurt a lot.

Many bodybuilders or advance weightlifters do some of these. But it may be an illusion due to their muscle size, example, sometimes it seems that a male bodybuilder isn’t doing the full ROM, when in reality they are. It’s that the size of their muscle is larger than most people’s so some ROM may seem to be less, when the real reason is they don’t have the normal ROM as an average man. You don’t see bodybuilders bouncing, and when they cheat they always keep their form without using momentum and know what muscles they are contracting. Cheating is used as a technique, and in order for you to use those techniques you really have to stop copying others and know what you are doing.